struction was imparted on all
subjects, and which was thus differentiated from grammar schools and
schools of divinity, in the former of which the curriculum was
restricted to Latin, and in the latter to theology. The phrase connoted
also a place of common resort, as distinct from mere local foundations,
the advantages of which were confined to the immediate neighbourhood.
According to Mr. Froude, no fewer than thirty thousand students
"gathered out of Europe to Paris to listen to Abelard"; and the
traditions of Oxford and Cambridge were equally hospitable.

THE "NATIONS"

Before discussing the system of degrees, it is desirable to speak of the
"men"--the candidates for graduation; and, in this connexion, stress
must be laid on the cosmopolitan character of our older universities,
which welcomed with open arms students of various races and of all ranks
of society. The Oxford statutes contain a provision for the
proclamations being made in Latin, that language being, as it is stated,
intelligible to the different nations represented by the scholars. In
addition to the native youth, Welshmen, Irishmen, and Scots were
accustomed to repair to the banks of the Isis and the Cam, and the two
former of these classes--at any rate at their first coming--might have
been totally ignorant of English.

The reader will hardly fail to have been struck with the occurrence of
Welsh names in the foregoing pages; and the records of judicial
proceedings mention the case of a Cambrian scholar, who stole a horse
from the stable of an Oxford inn and decamped with it, in the company of
several compatriots, to the Welsh mountains, in consequence of which the
unhappy innkeeper had to defend a suit brought against him by the
horse's owner! Notices of the Irish and the Scots are no less
characteristic of their imputed traits. Of the presence of the former
there is interesting testimony in petitions to the Crown on the part of
scandalized townsmen, in one of which they set forth that "there have
been murders, felonies, robberies, and riots, &c., lately committed in
the counties of Oxford, Berks, Wilts, and Bucks, by persons coming to
the town under the jurisdiction of the University, some of whom are the
King's lieges born in Ireland and the others his enemies called 'Wylde
Irisshmen'; and that these misdeeds continue daily to the scandal of the
University and the ruin of the country round about; the malefactors
threaten the King's officers and